Wednesday, January 7, 2015

The Attack on Charlie Hebdo: We Need More Blasphemy, Not Less

There
are no words to adequately express the sadness and outrage over the terrible
killings of journalists and others in the attack on Charlie Hebdo today. But
attacks on those who freely express criticism of religion are not limited to
what happened in Paris. Religious people--in this case, Christians--attacked
artistic freedom in Winnipeg this summer. I wrote about it in the Winnipeg Free
Press shortly after the incident.

In 1972, the musical
Godspell came to Toronto. Some Christians welcomed it, but many did not. On
opening night, hundreds of people came out to protest.

Far from being angered
by the protests, John Michael Tebelek, who wrote the book on which the musical was
based, was delighted. He came outside the theatre and offered free tickets to
the protesters.

As one of the protesters
recalled: "The guy who wrote Godspell thought he'd died and gone to
heaven" because of the great publicity the protest gave the play.
"The next day, it was all over the newspapers. It couldn't have got them
better advertising."

That story came back to
me last week when I read about how some Winnipeggers were protesting Theresa
Thompson's fringe play Lies of a Promiscuous Woman.

My guess is that the
play, which suggests that Mary may have lied about the birth of Jesus, would
have achieved only modest notoriety without the complaint.

Instead, the show became
big news in Winnipeg and nationally after some protesters wrote the words
"slut" and "blasphemer" on the show's posters and on
Thompson's car.

In other words, the
protest backfired spectacularly. Worse, it also made Thompson feel unsafe -- a
particularly un-Christian thing to do.

Looking back, a few
things arise for me from this incident.

First off, some media
could use a bit of basic religious education. Some reports about the play got
it wrong when they described the birth of Jesus as the Immaculate Conception.
The Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic doctrine that refers to how Mary
herself was conceived free of sin, not about the birth of Jesus.

Then there's the
question of whether the play is blasphemous. Thompson seems to think so. She
told one interviewer that the play is "by definition blasphemy, a
sacrilege."

According to the
dictionary, the definition of blasphemy is "great disrespect to God or to
something holy." By that definition, she may be right.

On the other hand,
questions about the virgin birth have been around for centuries. There is
nothing disrespectful about expressing doubts about it. Other artists have done
this, such as Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand. In 1989, he directed Jesus of Montreal, a
thought-provoking film that suggests that the father of Jesus was actually a
Roman soldier stationed in Palestine.

Rather than try to shut
down Thompson's play, I think we should welcome plays and movies like Jesus of
Montreal and Lies of a Promiscuous Woman. People of faith may not agree with
their points of view, but plays, movies and books like that can get people
talking about religion.

One group that has taken
the right approach to things like this is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints. When the controversial musical The Book of Mormon came out, they
didn't mount protests or write angry letters, even though the play contains a
fair amount of profanity and explicit sexual references.

Instead, the church saw
it as a chance to tell North Americans more about who Mormons are and what they
believe. At theatres in the U.S. and Canada, members of the church can
sometimes be found handing out literature and engaging people in conversation.

Maybe the problem isn't
that there are plays and movies that are offensive, sacrilegious or even
blasphemous, but that there aren't enough of them. After all, throngs of people
are not going to show up at churches or other places of worship to explore
issues of faith and belief. If people in Canada are going to encounter faith
today, it will more likely be in places they actually frequent -- places like
theatres or fringe festivals.

It has been said the
opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. Today, when the dominant response to
religion of any kind seems to be "whatever," maybe it's a good thing
to be shaken up a little by an artist like Teresa Thompson.